


domesticity, of our city

by Dhillarearen



Series: Quiet is a Language [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, exy nerds in love, soft jean, there's a couple swear words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 00:33:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15569823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dhillarearen/pseuds/Dhillarearen
Summary: Soft JereJean on a day off, together, during their professional exy careers.(Sometimes it's easier for Jean to speak in French. That's okay.)





	domesticity, of our city

**Author's Note:**

> They’re speaking in French for most of this fic, but I’ve put most of the conversation in English for readability (featuring Jeremy’s poor grasp of French conjugations. I feel you, bro). The few French phrases are translated with hovertext and at the bottom.

The blue sheep’s-wool slippers Jeremy kept tucked under the bed were fraying and lumpy in the sole from too many trips through the washing machine, but they were the best for protecting Jeremy’s toes from the icy morning floor, so he tugged them on before he shuffled across the hallway to the kitchen for breakfast. Jean was already up, as was usual—he liked to sit by the window with his coffee and watch the sky fade from blue-black to soft grey to robin’s egg, tracking the patch of sunlight across the table until it hit the edge of the windowsill and sparked against the glass. When Jeremy walked in Jean smiled and lifted the pan he was holding over the stove. Eggs and bacon.

The smell was heavenly. Jeremy’s stomach rumbled at the promise of grease and Jeremy scratched sleepily over his bare chest and came up behind Jean to rest his cheek against Jean’s bathrobe. “Good morning.”

“ _Bonjour. Il fait nuageux_ ," Jean said, nodding at the heavy clouds outside the window. Jeremy could have seen that for himself, but Jean hadn’t mentioned the weather to inform Jeremy of the necessity for umbrellas. Jeremy wrapped his arms around Jean and held him for a moment, enjoying the warmth of Jean’s strong, impossibly wide back, and then kissed Jean’s shoulder blade through the bathrobe and wandered to the cabinet to get plates.

“French today?” Jeremy asked. Jean nodded at him over his shoulder and flipped the eggs, reaching for the jar of basil and applying a generous measure. “ _D’accord,_ ” said Jeremy pausing to kiss Jean’s other shoulder blade as he passed behind him for the cutlery. Jean had already been relaxed, but he let out a tiny, grateful sigh and started forking the bacon onto the plate Jeremy held out for him. Only half; Jeremy liked his bacon floppy, and Jean preferred crisp, so whoever cooked always made both kinds. Jeremy bumped him with his hip in thanks carried both plates, forks, and knives to the table, hooking an ankle around one of the chairs to drag it forward as he sat down. He took one of the oranges from the bowl in the center to peel while he watched Jean work. The sharp, citrus scent matched the damp freshness of the impending rain. Jeremy leaned away from the spray of juice as he pressed his thumbs into the dimpled skin. There was something satisfying about that, every time.

Jean was humming softly as he puttered around, adding spices and turning down the heat. Jeremy recognized a few of the words Jean dropped in absentmindedly, but there weren’t enough of them for Jeremy to place the song—if even he knew it. He didn’t mind. It had taken Jean a long time to be comfortable enough to do something like sing while he made breakfast for the two of them.

Some days, or hours of days, Jean didn’t feel comfortable trying to form words, and they communicated through text message or (usually hilarious) pantomime. Other times, like now, Jean could speak out loud in French but not in English, nor in the smattering of German that Neil Josten was attempting to teach him. After five years studying hand-me-down textbooks and fumbling to repeat Jean’s phrases, Jeremy could understand Jean almost as well in either language, and was able to respond likewise. It comforted Jean, to hear the language that had once been his final holdout as well as to speak it. Though Jean did despair of Jeremy’s grammar.

Jean’s relationship with speech and his languages was complicated and often fraught, but it wasan ordinary enough part of Jeremy’s world by now that he was more concerned with the tousled curls of Jean’s bed-head, sticking up on one side and crushed flat down the other. Jeremy hid his mouth behind the orange and thought of twisting Jean’s hair up in his fingers, the slight roughness of it before Jean’s shower and the way Jean’s eyes drooped in simple, easy pleasure when Jeremy combed it back over his ears. His man had a handsome face, and Jeremy liked to remind Jean that he wanted to see it.

The toaster popped. Jean tipped the eggs into a bowl and nabbed the toast with the wooden tongs that Jeremy always forgot to use.There was already butter out, so Jeremy waited in his chair as Jean brought over the rest of the breakfast and settled it beside the bowl of oranges. He passed Jeremy two pieces of toast and Jeremy rewarded him with an orange section as Jean drew back from kissing his cheek, holding it against Jean’s lips until Jean opened to accept it. Jean allowed Jeremy to feed him two more sections of orange before getting up to refill his coffee mug and get Jeremy one of his own. They both like their coffee the same way, velvet-rich and dark enough that the single spill of cream barely made a difference. It was one of the things that Jeremy had written in his mental book of _Why Dating Jean Moreau Feels Like Winning The Lottery, Except The Lottery Is Tall Exy Players With Nice Butts And Holy Shit You Get To Tap That, Stay Cool, Man, Stay Cool._

The title remained open to revisions.

“ _C’est bien, dans le matin, un athlète professionnel est mon cuisinier personnel,_ ” Jeremy said as he spooned himself up a portion of scrambled eggs. Jean shook his head at the teasing, not unfondly, and stole the spoon from Jeremy’s hand to fill his own plate. They made lazy conversation in French as they ate, deciding what the day would hold. Jeremy had intended to take Jean to the waterfront, but that no longer seemed viable, given the weather. If it cleared up tomorrow, maybe they could go then, before Jean had catch his return flight back to Minneapolis, six states away. Leaving always felt like an open wound, whichever of them was visiting, but it was worth it for the moments like these, sitting at the same table in the same apartment. Jean nudged Jeremy’s ankle with a thick-socked foot and Jeremy watched the upturned cobwebs of Jean’s eyelashes flutter against his cheek, tanned hale and healthy after so many years in the dark. 

After the dishes were cleared and loaded into the dishwasher, the two of them spread out on the couch, propping laptops on bent knees and sharing legroom. Jean clucked at Jeremy’s shortage of drink coasters, a routine so over-worn it went largely unregistered for them both. Fifty minutes into the footage Jeremy was reviewing of his last game, the skies opened and poured their contents in steady drumbeats across the roof overhead and the flowers in the window box, the few scraggly survivors that Jeremy hadn’t managed yet to kill. For the first year living here, Jeremy’s California heart had missed the endless sunshine so hard he thought it might break. Eventually he had learned to love the rain; now the rhythm was a comfort and the sight of droplets beading on the window panes was wont to make his mind fuzzy and his mouth yawn. He wiggled his toes more firmly under Jean’s thigh and squinted at his laptop screen in a bid for concentration.

“You’re watching the Rosettes game again,” Jean said, breaking what little focus Jeremy had regained and making him look up. He shrugged guiltily as Jean poked admonishing fingers into Jeremy’s calf. “Don’t do your head in. I told you, the pass you got was shit.”

“A striker should not need a perfect pass to score,” said Jeremy, though they’d had this argument already on Friday. “The goalie, she looks the other way. I should get through.” 

“So you’ll do that next time,” Jean said. There was no doubt in his voice. The surety, Jean’s faith in him and in his ability, made Jeremy duck his head. Jean regarded him for a moment over the top of his glasses, then rapped his knuckles gently over the spot he’d poked the moment before. “What did your sister call you about last night? You were fine yesterday.”

Jeremy did have a tendency to spiral into self-hatred whenever he got upset. For a memorable month, Jean had blasted clips of rock music at Jeremy through Skype whenever Jeremy started to turn their nightly conversations into greatest-hits remixes of the times he’d recently fucked up. He supposed rewinding the same five seconds of him failing to make a shot for almost an hour was an obvious tell. 

He closed the top of his laptop and rubbed the headache spot in the center of his forehead. “It was good news, I promise. She is going to be married.”

To his credit, Jean caught his own disgusted grimace before it got too big and turned it into a clearing of the throat. Jean didn’t approve of Anika’s boyfriend. Jeremy, though exasperated, couldn’t be surprised. Jean had only met Michael once, and it generally took Jean at least three meetings before he considered liking someone. “Were you this congratulatory when she told you?”  
  
“I was the perfect overjoyed brother. I was!” Jeremy insisted at Jean’s flat look. “I _am_ happy for her _._ But…” he sighed. “She is my younger sister? Jean, _I_ do not feel old enough to get married, and I was born two years first. I thought—think—am thinking? about time, I suppose. What I have done with my time, and what I have not.”  
  
Jean didn’t answer for a long moment. His hand travelled up Jeremy’s calf to his knee, and then back down again, rucking up the fabric of Jeremy’s sweatpants and making Jeremy’s leg twitch as the fleece tickled his skin. “Would you ever want to get married, do you think?”  
  
“Definitely,” Jeremy said, throwing his laptop onto the coffee table to wrap his arms around his chest. “It is good, someday, to have a place with someone. To make it permanent. For better and worse, all that, and saying _my husband,_ and having, you know, a cat…” he trailed off, catching sight of the pink tint splashed across Jean’s cheekbones. “Oh. _Oh._ ”

“That’s good to know,” said Jean, in an unconvincing attempt at nonchalance, as Jeremy mentally kicked himself. “Keep me updated.”

“Yes,” said Jeremy helplessly. His heart was beating very fast, and he had the inappropriate desire to laugh. He wasn’t sure if it was born from nerves or from the dark-coffee-flavored happiness that was blooming across his tongue, filling his mouth with a smile too wide to contain. “I will—in years. In a few years, I am expect—I need a nice proposal. Big. Public. Makes old ladies cry.”

“Okay,” said Jean, the flush spreading to cover his whole face. Behind his glasses, his eyes were bright as stars. “I think maybe that’s something that I can arrange.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _Bonjour. Il fait nuageux._ — Good morning. It’s cloudy.
> 
>  _D’accord._ — Okay.
> 
>  _C’est bien, dans le matin, un athlète professionnel est mon cuisinier personnel._ — It is well, in the morning, a professional athlete is my personal chef. (Jeremy is not very good at French.)
> 
>    
> Sometimes Jean goes nonverbal; sometimes he goes nonverbal in any language but French (because speaking French was the one part of him that Riko couldn’t break and so speaking it feels different, and closer to himself, and also not being punished for speaking French means that Riko is gone).
> 
> Jean Moreau: savage in the (exy court) streets, sweetheart between the (exy player) sheets


End file.
